5 Best Keyboard Apps for Android

If you own an iPhone you can use any keyboard you want—as long as it’s Apple’s. But if you have an Android phone, there’s a wide variety of third-party keyboards available for download that can suggest words as you type, let you swipe between letters for faster one-handed input and a whole lot more. Want to change to a split layout, have all the numbers up top all the time or customize the entire look and feel of your keyboard? You can do all of that and then some with our five best keyboard apps for Android phones and tablets.

SwiftKey Keyboard ($3.99)

There’s a reason why Samsung and BlackBerry have licensed SwiftKey’s technology for their own keyboards. This Android app is so smart it can predict the words you’re going to type next. Just tap the suggestions above the layout as you compose emails, respond to texts or post Facebook updates. In some cases you can enter entire sentences without touching the individual letters. If you grant permission, SwiftKey can also learn from what you type in Facebook, Twitter and Gmail to boost accuracy. Our favorite feature is SwiftKey Flow, a trace-type option that one-ups Swype by letting you string multiple words together without your finger leaving the display.

Responsible for the editorial vision for Laptop Mag and Tom's Guide, Mark Spoonauer has been Editor in Chief of LAPTOP since 2003 and has covered technology for nearly 15 years. Mark speaks at key tech industry events and makes regular media appearances on CNBC, Fox and CNN. Mark was previously reviews editor at Mobile Computing, and his work has appeared in Wired, Popular Science and Inc.

GO keyboard is good but has some flaws. I don’t like how you cannot reposition your cursor if you haven’t made a selection from suggested words or pressed your space bar. I also don’t like that the voice to text feature doubles everything if you try to edit the text. It has too many glitches that I have reported to the developer, they don’t seem to care

I use Go Keyboard, I just love the interface, but I heard it has many flaws. The most major one I heard of, and I think I will give up on it beause of what I’ll say, is that they seemingly don’t have a Privacy Policy, meaning they can use absolutely ALL information you type in their favor. I say again, I didn’t check but I will. It’s true: what seems to good has its big, hidden flaws. I hope it’s not true, or the Go staff can access all my accounts… >.<